THF- LATE ROBERT GLADSTONE COMMUNICATIONS

ROBERT GLADSTONE

THE death of Robert Gladstone in a nursing home on 15 March, 1940, after a brief illness, deprived the Society of one of its most valued and accomplished members, who from his joining in 1902 until his last days had been closely and actively associated with its work. A member of the council of the Society since 1911, and a Vice-President since 1924, he rendered services of which the quality may be judged by the Catalogue of the Museum of the Historic Society of Lancashire and compiled by him and the late Dr. R. T. Bailey in 1913 and published in Volume 65. That this was " an extremely arduous task " may be appreciated from the prefatory note. The following papers are recorded as having been read by him to the Society :

" Early Charters of the Knights Hospitallers, relating to Much VVoolton, near Liverpool " (1902, in Vol. 54). " Liverpool Shipping in 1626 " (1905, not publ.). " A Report on Liverpool Castle, 2 October 1559 " (1907, in Vol. .W). " Liverpool Castle Tunnel " (1909, not publ.). " Our National Records and how they have been treated " (1909, not publ.). " The Corporate Seal of Liverpool " (1921, not publ.). " Some Notes on Liverpool's Early Charters " (1931, not publ.). " The Ancient Borough Seal of Liverpool, and the Recent Discoveries " (1936, not publ.). " The Arms of Liverpool " (1937, n°t publ.). He excelled, too, in the art of delivering informal and impromptu addresses, characterised by strong common- sense, wide scholarship and erudition, fluency of speech and great sense of humour, such as that upon the Gregson 2l6 Communications.

manuscripts which he delivered on the visit of the Society to the Liverpool University Library only a fortnight before his death. His exceptional intellectual qualities were displayed to great advantage at the meetings of the Society, which he regularly attended and at which in recent years he presided with distinction. Born at Wavertree on 6 May, 1866, he was the third son of Robert Gladstone, for many years chairman of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. He was a great- grandson of Sir John Gladstone of Liverpool, and a grand-nephew of . Educated at Eton and New College, Oxford, he gained the degrees of M.A. and B.C.L. Subsequently he joined the Inner Temple, but was not called to the Bar. His abundant energies were devoted largely to voluntary public activities and to study. Professionally, he chose to be described as an author engaged in historical and early legal research. He remained a bachelor, and until his father's death lived with the family at Vale, near Liverpool. He then settled at the Angel Hotel in Dale Street, and engaged rooms at for his work. That Mr. Gladstone's output of published work was so small was due to his exactingly high standard of research, and the inexhaustible range and depth of his inquiries, which caused reluctance to round off an investigation. Nevertheless, the fruits of his labours remain in the mass of manuscript notes which, under the terms of his will, has passed into the possession of the Liverpool Athenaeum, together with a selection of the rare books, manuscripts, documents and maps accumulated in his exceptionally well-chosen library. In addition to his papers for this Society, three others, on the " Social Theories of William Morris " (1896), " Some Communistic Experiments " (1897) and "Rational Morality" (1906) were published in the Proceedings of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, and two more, on " The Authorship Communicatio us. 217 of the Second Volume of Nisbet's Heraldry " (1919) and " The Early Annandale Charters and their Strange Resting Place " (1919) appeared in the Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society. His brief but authoritative Notes on the History and Antiquities of Liverpool, which first appeared in the handbook of the Meeting of the British Association at Liverpool in 1923, was reproduced in the handbook of the Conference of the British Hospitals Association in Liverpool in 1932, and afterwards published with an appendix, as a separate work, in the same year. He wrote many communications to the Liverpool press, some of which were reprinted as leaflets. His review of Muir and Platt's History of Municipal Government in Liverpool, which appeared in the Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury of 19 September, 1906, was in itself a work of note. Among his projected works, mention should be made of Facsimiles of Five Liverpool Charters, which was prepared for publication in 1907, but did not after all see the light. He gave valuable assistance to the Liverpool University School of Local History and Records in con­ nexion with the publication of the early Liverpool Town Books, edited by Professor J. A. Twemlow, to the cost of which he contributed generous sums. The little tract, Four Pills for Social Ills (1925), deserves mention as a characteristic expression of his political outlook. Mr. Gladstone was a keen supporter of the Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, serving on its council from 1912 onward, and holding the office of Hon. Secretary from 1922 to 1933. Several of its volumes were published at his expense. He was President of the Liverpool Athenaeum in 1907, and took a great and benevolent interest in its cultural activities. From 1910 onward he served on the Liverpool Corporation Libraries, Museums and Arts Committee, and was presented in 1937 with an illuminated address in appreciation of his devoted 2i8 Communications. services and many benefactions. A most efficient, organizer, he contributed largely to the success of exhibi­ tions of historical, mechanical and nautical interest, notably on the occasion of the Liverpool Septcentenary celebration (1907), the Liverpool Civic Weeks (1924 to 1928), the Liverpool-Manchester Railway centenary (1930) and the Liverpool Shipping Week (1931). His plans to provide Liverpool with a Record Office in 1937 were unfortunately upset by the sharp rise of steel prices due to rearmament. By his will he provided for the erection of a Liverpool Shipping Gallery. This is not the place to speak at length of Mr. Gladstone's many other public activities. A City Councillor from 1921 to 1927, he was prime mover in the events which led up to the sensational Garston housing inquiry. He presented to the city a handsome clock with transparent dial, designed by himself, for use in the Council Chamber as a reminder to loquacious members. The police shield which he invented for protection against flying brickbats and stones, after his experiences as a special constable in the Transport Strike of 1911, has now been found very- useful by the police in fire-bomb fighting. During the General Strike of 1926, and at other times of difficulty, his organizing abilities were put freely at the city'^.disposal. In the last war he served as captain of the 2nd Volunteer Battalion of the King's Liverpool Regiment. Subse­ quently, as President of the Altcar Rifle Club, the Liverpool Baseball League and the Lovers of Old Liverpool Society (the last-named being discontinued in 1935 after an existence of ten years), Vice-president of the Society for Nautical Research, Hon. Secretary of the Civic Service League, Hon. Treasurer of the Council of the Safety First Association, and an enthusiastic Rotarian, he gave of his best to the end in the interests of culture and citizenship. F.A.B. Communications. 219

LAWRENCE HALL

The death of Mr. Lawrence Hall on I June, 1940, was sudden and unexpected and came as a very real grief to his friends both of this Society and outside it. Mr. Hall, who was born in Liverpool on 23 November, 1864, was the third son of Robert Cunningham Hall, and came of a family long established in Liverpool. His mother, Mary Holt, was descended from Robert Lewin, minister of Benn's Garden Chapel (now Ullet Road Church) from 1770 to 1816. Through Lewin's wife, Mary Hensman, Mr. Hall was able to claim descent from Arthur Annesley, first Earl of Anglesey, and was therefore related to John Aikin, the principal of Warrington Academy from 1761 to 1780, and more distantly to John and Charles Wesley. Mr. Hall's interest in Nonconformity may therefore appear to have had a hereditary basis. The home at Sunnyside, Princes Park, was essentially a cultivated one, and here, in 1873, Ralph Waldo Emerson was welcomed on his last European journey. At a later date another poet, Sir William Watson, visited there. It is not surprising that a boy brought up in such an atmosphere should have developed a love for the poets, and for Wordsworth in particular. He also developed an interest in both painting and architecture. Later in life, whenever in London, he never missed visiting the National Gallery. He took a particular interest in the building of of which he was a " Cathedral Builder ". Mr. Hall was educated at the Liverpool Institute and from it went direct into cotton broking, from which he did not finally retire until 1927. In retirement, Mr Hall found complete satisfaction in turning to the study of

L 220 Communications.

history. Reared as a Unitarian, and all his life a faithful supporter of Hope Street Church, and all the causes con­ nected with it and its allied group of churches, he turned to the elucidation of some of the problems that hid the origins of Nonconformity in Liverpool. He had a rare gift for discovering facts, and the patience that is needed in historical research. He was also a kind and generous helper of other writers, and was prepared to put at their disposal the results of his own researches. He was President of the Unitarian Historical Society from 1935 to 1937, and during that time he was not only a loyal member of the society, but a most helpful friend to the officers, and assisted, in ways too many to be told, a new and untried editor in a first experience of editorship. His own town also held his warm interest, and in 1906 he became a member of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, and joined the Council in 1935. Mr. Hall contributed the following papers to the Transactions of the two societies.

Toxteth Park Chapel in the Seventeenth Century. Unitarian Historical Society, 1934. The Ancient Chapel of Park, and Toxteth School. Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1935. The Birthplace of Jeremiah Horrocks. Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1936. Extracts from Family Letters of one Hundred Years Ago. Unitarian Historical Society, 1939. The Clough Fund. Unitarian Historical Society, 1940. Some Glimpses of Life in Liverpool in the Reign of George IV. Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1940.

A.D.H. Communications 221

FREDERICK CHARLES LARKIN, F.R.C.S., F.S.A. (25 November, 1940) FREDERICK CHARLES LARKIN was born at Sheerness where his father, the late Dr. W. H. Larkin, was then in practice, and died at his home in Bedford Street, Liverpool, on 25 November, 1940, at the age of 82. It may be said of Larkin that, in the best sense of the words, he led a double life. His primary career was that of a surgeon, his secondary that of an antiquary, and both were distinguished. The former has been honour­ ably placed on record by his professional colleagues in the British Medical Journal of 21 December, 1940. It is the latter which here calls for a pious memorial, from one who owes him much. Dr. Larkin, as with " terminological inexactitude " he was familiarly called by his lay friends, joined this Society in January, 1901, and throughout the nearly forty years of his membership took an active part in its work. Elected a Vice-President in 1918, he was the genial chairman at many of our meetings. It was at one of these meetings some twenty years ago that I came to know Larkin, to appreciate the scientific accuracy of his methods, and to profit by his wide knowledge. A summer tour with him in northern and midland England, or in North and South Wales, in the company of two other members of the Society, the late Dr. Reginald Bailey and Mr. J. H. M. Savage, was an archaeological education. Not an ancient camp, not a tumulus, not even the site of a tumulus levelled by the plough ; not a medieval church, its architecture, and the details of its carvings, font and brasses, escaped his trained eye. From every such excursion, as from his 222 Communications earlier wanderings throughout the land, he never failed to bring back the photographic evidence of his visit. Many thousand negatives, with the corresponding slides, were his witnesses, and his own hands made them.* When his retirement from practice left him the necessary leisure, Larkin turned his attention to field archaeology, collaborating with Professor J. P. Droop in the excavation of the site of the Castle of West Derby, dating from the early Norman or pre-Norman period. Their joint report was published in the Annals of the Institute of Archaeology in 1928. A few years later, this time, however, not as a soldier in the trenches, but as an appreciative " observer," Larkin followed with close interest the Varley " digs " at Maiden Castle on Bickerton Hill, near Malpas, and at the still more important Eddisbury Hill camp in Delamere Forest. To a similar category belongs Larkin's paper entitled " Excavations on the Site of Liverpool Castle, 1927," read to this Society and published in Vol. 79 of the Transactions. Of Larkin's wide knowledge of medieval antiquities, especially ecclesiastical, the chief outcome was his paper in the Transactions for 1921 (Vol. 73) on the twelfth- century Kirkby font, a model of careful description and interpretation. The interest taken by Larkin in the city which became his home for sixty years was always very close. He was, in fact, the chief authority on the topography of Liverpool. In a study to which he gave the title of " A Palimpsest of Liverpool," he showed by careful measurements based on the wanderings of years, street by street, alley by alley, watercourse by watercourse, how the ancient The actual number, as calculated by the Rev. Odo Blundell, O.S.B., shortly after Dr. Larkin's death, was over 7,000. Fr. Blundell informed a meeting of the Society early in the present year (1941) that more than 22 English counties were represented, besides North and South Wales, Ireland, Paris and other parts of France. The collection also comprised about 1,000 slides and negatives of maps and plans, anatomy, astronomy, etc. It was subsequently presented by Dr. Larkin's widow to the Public Museum, where it was unhappily destroyed in the recent fire. Communications 223 topography of the town could be made to reveal itself beneath its modern overlaying.* Of his great knowledge of local antiquities, Larkin gave me the full benefit. As I have already acknowledged in the preface to Vol. 2 of the Liverpool Town Books {1935), not only did he read all the proofs and make many valuable suggestions, but he also contributed an elaborate Appendix, in which he identified and traced the subsequent history of the various lands and buildings which made up the Corporate estate in the sixteenth century. The foundation of the Ancient Monuments Society in 1924 added another congenial sphere to Larkin's activities. As a member of the Council and a Vice- President, his advice was greatly valued at the meetings in Manchester, over which he often presided. A competent Latinist and a good French scholar, Larkin was always interested in original documents. He was always ready to learn " some new thing." For example, in his later years he taught himself palaeography, at least to the point of being able to read a medieval charter. No man was more modest, none more unselfish, none more ready to help others, none sought less the limelight. Nevertheless, when a few years ago he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, he was, I think, genuinely gratified, as still more were his many friends. J.A.T.

* Unfortunately, in consequence of a disagreement with a former Hon. Editor of the Transactions, arising out of the Kirkby font article, the " Palimpsest " was never printed, and, still more unfortunately, the manu­ script seems to have been destroyed very soon after Dr. Larkin's death. It has, at any rate, disappeared, together with all his other notes and papers on antiquarian and medical subjects.